A Kentucky murder has rocked that state's political circles, leaving the son of a legendary governor facing the death penalty and his 29-year-old former fiancee dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

Since both the suspect and victim hail from prominent political and social families, a local newspaper proclaimed "the resulting legal saga will likely become a spectacle not seen in Kentucky in modern times."Amanda Ross was gunned down outside her Lexington condominium in the predawn light of Sept. 11. The day before she had told a friend, "He's going to kill me" -- referring to Steve Nunn, 56, against whom she had obtained a restraining order after she filed a domestic violence complaint accusing him of striking her in the face. Adding to the drama, Nunn had visited a monument company the day before the murder and asked the merchant to inscribe Sept. 11 on a gravestone he had ordered.

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Following Ross's murder, police began searching for Nunn and found him in the church cemetery where his father and mother are buried. Bleeding from self-inflicted wounds to both wrists, Nunn was lying near a handgun that he picked up and pointed at police. He has been charged with murder and with violating the protective order. Ironically, as a Kentucky state legislator in 1998, Nunn co-sponsored legislation that made a murder perpetrated in violation of a domestic violence order a capital offense punishable by death.

Nunn, who was deputy secretary of the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services, was forced to resign his position following the scandal surrounding Ross's domestic violence complaint. The outgoing and well-liked Ross was the daughter of the leading financier of public projects in Kentucky. Nunn, a prominent Republican lawmaker from 1991 through 2006, ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2003. His father, Louie B. Nunn, was a larger-than-life political figure who, as governor of Kentucky from 1967 to 1971, was the only Republican governor to serve between 1943 and 2003.

"I just hope it doesn't turn into some tabloid display, because it's just two very, very fine, strong-willed, prominent families that have come together in this horrible tragedy that's one of the saddest things I've seen in some time," said a powerful lobbyist.

In a bizarre twist of this already Gothic southern tragedy, if Nunn is convicted and sentenced to die by lethal injection, he will become the second son of a Kentucky governor to receive the death penalty for murder. In the 19^th century, Isaac Desha, son of Gov. Joseph Desha, was convicted of brutally murdering a Mississippi man and sentenced to hang. But his father intervened in the case and pardoned his son. Unfortunately for Steve Nunn, he is beyond the reach of his once-powerful father.


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